I just received a beautiful book by our friend Madeline Millán (FIT-SUNY). This collection of poetry and whimsical prose has been best described by Puerto Rican poet Vanessa Droz. She writes:

“If with Leche/Milk (First Prize in 2009 of PEN Club-Puerto Rico) Madeline Millán moved us with her powerful and intelligent poetry and an outstanding handling of the language that separates it from the easy and the cheesy, with Día Cero she gives us, with the same virtues, a chronicle of poetry and prose that depicts two processes—a primary infancy on the island of Puerto Rico and another transformation—as if it were another infancy—in Manhattan.

The anxiety of the voyage structures this book from the very first page until the end: travels around the planet, through the history of cinema and music, through human misery, through illuminating readings, through the intimate and domestic lives of women, especially with women poets. Día Cero is a landmark, a milestone in which space and time remain filmed. In fact, about this filmed poetry, we can say that it is both transparent and complex, always authorized. What does Millán want to approach, or better yet, what is she fleeing from? As we plunge into the pages of Día Cero, we will watch and we will feel, like with all good literature, the blind humming of poetry when it is being written, the previous instance when the pen meets the paper that the reader now has in his/her hands.”

For purchasing information and V. Droz’s review, see http://www.amazon.com/cero-Spanish-Edition-Madeline-Millan/dp/193516354X